Travis

Everything at Once - Average, Based on 3 Critics

AllMusic - 80Based on rating 8/10

80

Over the span of almost three decades, Scottish indie rock stalwarts Travis have persevered, both holding faithful to the sound that they helped break into the U.K. mainstream in the '90s and rocking long enough to watch their sonic progeny spread their wings and fly off in various artistic directions (see: Coldplay, Keane, Snow Patrol). And through it all, Travis remained reliable, seldom veering too far from the center.

It’s a “Sliding Doors” moment. If, in the early noughties, it had been Travis and not Coldplay who had gone on to mega-sales, celebrity couplings and ubiquitous global domination (we would have also been spared Chris Martin’s artless, cringing bounding around the stage, but that’s another matter). Travis, the band who Martin once aspired to be, arrive in 2016 on a light downwards drift in popularity and a perception that their gentle follk/pop/indie coalition is rather too nice and comfortable to make any sort of mark these days.

In many ways, this Travis record is no better or worse than previous Travis records. You still get your plangent guitars, your harmless jangle and Fran Healy’s way with an inoffensive semi-melody. You also get a video in which the members of the band all prance around like babies to a song that sounds like Remember You’re a Womble. Have they always done that sort of thing? Maybe.